A People's Church? - The Mindanao-Sulu Church Debacle

The thesis portrays the attempt at greater lay participation and growing communion within and between local Catholic Churches in Mindanao-Sulu from 1971-1983. A focus for these varying ideologies of communion and participation was the Mindanao-Sulu Pastoral Conference and tensions were finally highlighted in the Dissociation of the Bishops from the Secretariate and the Board of the Conference. There were a number of causes for this rupture including disagreement about the nature of the church ; the exercise of authority ; the "this-wordly" demands of faith ; and the question of armed struggle.